


You can sleep now.

by dxggorylives



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27586373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dxggorylives/pseuds/dxggorylives
Summary: All ghosts have a different relationship with sleep.A quick look at how each of the boys struggle, or not so much, with this aspect of the world as they now know it.
Relationships: Alex & Julie Molina & Luke Patterson & Reggie, Alex & Luke Patterson & Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 213





	You can sleep now.

All ghosts have a different relationship with sleep.

Technically they didn’t _need_ it, just like they didn’t need food or water to sustain themselves. But unlike eating and drinking, which required a functioning stomach, sleeping was a little different in that their brains clearly still worked and so sleep was possible whilst not being necessarily _essential_.

They’d been figuring stuff like this out roughly and on the fly ever since the day they crash-landed out of purgatory and into Julie’s studio, but having Willie around now to explain things really helped speed up the learning process. Alex always had a million questions, that’s just how his mind worked, and whilst Willie didn’t always have a million answers to give him, just simply the way he smiled and casually shrugged his shoulder in response to something he didn’t know went a long way in easing some of the tightness Alex often felt in his chest. Willie’s presence in itself felt like reassurance.

But back to sleep.

At the end of the day, ghosts are just _people_ , same as they were ‘before’. People that, like, just don’t happen to be alive anymore.

For Luke, this whole ‘not needing to sleep’ thing was one of the blessings of their current situation. Even in life he’d thought of it as a hindrance, always getting frustrated with himself when he felt his eyelids begin to grow heavy as he stubbornly worked through the night into the wee hours on songs for Sunset Curve. He loved what he was doing _so_ much, and there was _so_ much for him to do, he just never wanted to stop. Now he never had to. All that passion before had been overflowing, now he had this endless capacity for it and the prospect was so freaking _exciting_.

Sometimes though, if it was a slow day, or the other guys were busy and Julie was at school he’d curl up on _his_ couch in the studio and cat nap. For old time’s sake.

When it came to Reggie, he just liked being around other people and didn’t overly love the quiet hours when he could end up being completely on his own. So in terms of sleep, he was happy to take it or leave it based on what other people around were doing. Generally though, if there was something going on, Reggie was happy to be involved. Obviously the Molina’s all retreated to bed at some point every night, but with Luke so often creatively charged at night ( _“You really actually lucked out with this whole ghost thing, huh?” Alex had teased “You always were powered by the moon”_ ) it wasn’t uncommon for him to just sit up with Luke working on song lyrics or melodies and the like.

Although sometimes Reggie liked to go out for walks at night among the lifers. LA, especially downtown, was _fun_ after dark - all the most weird, interesting people tended to be out. Observing people like that, weaving in and out of them in the blanketing shroud of the night, made him feel this strange connection with them and it kind of made him feel alive in some strange way.

Converging from his bandmates, Alex liked the familiarity of the idea that “you go to bed at night when it gets dark and you sleep until it’s light again”. Finding out that he could sleep, even as a ghost, was a comfort. Don’t get him wrong, he loves his friends to the ends of the earth and there’s nobody he’d rather be going through this kind of experience with, and he even sometimes took the opportunity to sit up and work with Luke and Reggie (Julie too, on the weekends), catch up on all the TV and movies they’d missed, or try and work his way around figuring out Julie’s old iPhone that she’d given them all to share.

But at some point in the night, Alex _always_ ‘went to bed’.

He liked ‘going to bed’ with Willie, too. Because Luke and Reggie often stayed up, the old mattress up in the loft had sort of become Alex’s de facto ‘room’, and because (for obvious reasons) Willie was feeling less and less comfortable and safe at Caleb’s despite the fact that the man had sort of disappeared on this indefinite ‘leave of absence’, he was finding himself coming to hang out with Alex (and his other bandmates) in Julie’s studio more and more. So, really, the mattress was kind of ‘theirs’. Because even if the movie they’d all been watching was a _really good movie_ , if Alex wanted to head to bed most of the time Willie was powerless but to follow him upstairs with the prospect of A) semi-privacy and B) cuddling. Even if the privacy was only ‘semi’, he didn’t really care. As comfortable as Willie was in his own company, he’d skated the Earth for so long now feeling distinctly and sometimes achingly alone he’d kind of forgotten what it had been like to have proper friends, be _close_ to someone like he was with Alex.

Tonight, they lay together on the mattress adorned with a mini-mountain of pillows and blankets as if to compensate for it not being the comfiest in the entire world. The space was bathed in the glow of the moon through the window, and the faint, distant light emanating from the TV on the floor below the loft. They could still hear the low hum of ‘ _Point Break_ ’ and occasional chatter from Luke and Reggie, though they were notably trying to talk as quietly as possible for two people who often lacked appropriate volume control. Alex had been the one to suggest heading to bed, though now that he was here he seemed distracted. He lay on his back, eyes alternating between staring a hole in the ceiling and closing shut tight, almost like he was determined to _make_ himself fall asleep.

Willie reached out and softly tucked a strand of Alex’s hair behind his ear. “You okay?”

“Hm?” The words and the now lingering touch of his fingers seem to snap Alex back from somewhere, and he relaxes into them for a fleeting moment. “Oh, yeah”.

Willie’s eyebrows furrow with concern. “You sure? You seem kind of tense…”

He trails off, waiting for a response from Alex that doesn’t come. Every other part of the boy was eerily still, save for his restless foot Willie could feel shaking away under the covers. It’s a bit of a stretch, but after shifting closer to him Willie manages to reach his leg across and still it with his own foot, the touch gentle but insistent. It’s enough of a break in his concentration that it’s visible to Willie’s he’s interrupted Alex’s train of thought, and so he takes the chance to try again. He’s always been good at that, knowing when Alex does need to be pushed and when to fall back and just be there for him.

“If there’s something on your mind, you can tell me” He speaks softly, voice low enough to be heard only by the two of them, but with a firmness that seems to resonate somewhere in Alex’s head. His eyes flutter shut again for a moment, only this time in a way that seems natural, and almost peaceful before opening again.

“Most of the time I’m not even 100% sure what I’m specifically anxious about” he starts hesitantly “It’s just this… general, abstract feeling of being unsettled that makes _nothing_ feel right, and so you worry about it all”.

Willie nods in silent understanding, and is about to reply when Alex continues, quickly as if he’d had to work up the nerve to say it.

“The dark kind of makes it worse, though”.

Alex had told Willie before about ‘The Room’, and he’d admittedly been a little bit horrified. _Twenty-five whole years trapped in some unnamed, anonymously pitch-black purgatory caught somewhere between Earth and the afterlife._ Alex had laughed kind of self-deprecatingly through the story, trying to brush it off by making fun of himself for crying and not being able to reach out for Luke or Reggie, who he knew were there with him. It made Willie’s heart ache in his chest, though, and wish he could’ve been there for him himself.

When Willie did hold Alex after that he always held him that _little_ bit tighter, always made worth it by how Alex’s long arms gripped him and held him close to his chest. How safe it made Willie feel in return.

Willie shoots Alex a little private smile and cups his face, pressing a brief but lingering kiss to his cheek before pulling away and getting up from the bed. Alex’s eyes follow him with confusion as Willie stumbles around, searching for something with determinedly-set eyes.

“What are you-”

“Hold on!”

Alex huffs out a ghost of a laugh, and Willie finally comes upon what he’d been looking for in his previously discarded pants. He pulls his phone out of the pocket, then re-joins Alex in bed. He scrolls through it for a few seconds, and then all of a sudden the space is lit up by a pale pink light glowing from his phone. He places it on the windowsill above their heads, then settles back down close to Alex’s side, looking quietly smug.

Alex looks back at him, eyes shining, and can’t help but smile. Willie takes his hand where it’s resting outside of the covers, savouring the feeling of the other boy’s hand in his as his thumb swipes soothingly across the back of Alex’s hand.

“I got you, hotdog” he says playfully, because it always gets a chuckle and an eye roll out of Alex, as much as he tries not to.

“You can go to sleep”.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! This is my first time writing for JATP, and this little thingie is the result of a feverish burst of inspiration seemingly from nowhere very late at night. So I apologise for any possible typos or grammar thingies as I just sort of blurted it all out and uploaded it. I've swung into hyperfixation with this show hard since I finished binging it a few days ago, and I love it a lot, so something akin to this work was inevitable. Hope you enjoyed, and feedback is always welcome!
> 
> I'd like to write more for them, so if you have any prompts or ideas, feel free to reach out to me! I'm on Tumblr @niffineliot ♥


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